I assume that, ACT who are
based in Munich in Germany produced this composite
record as a means to promote their extensive
jazz catalogue, which includes American artists,
as well as the European ones that are featured
here.

The music is extremely diverse
and it is unlikely that many listeners are
going to like everything they hear, but most
will find something which is to their taste.
Many of the tracks attempt to be too clever
as far as I am concerned, the musicians are
too tied up with technical correctness and
as a result the very essence of jazz disappears.
This is probably the fault of music universities,
who spend such a disproportionate amount of
their team teaching music technology and seem
to forget that many of the greatest jazz innovators
knew nothing of all that, but played what
they felt in their heart and their head. A
lot of what I hear makes me wonder whether
jazz as I know it has a future! Which is rather
sad!

I was disappointed to find
that ACT had not included a sleeve note with
their record, but instead had included their
2006/7 catalogue. This is a fascinating document
and it contains many albums I would very much
like to own, but unfortunately it tells you
little about the artists on the record. It
is even quite difficult to find the album
each track is taken from in the catalogue!